Site Wide Internal Navigation links
-
Hello all,
All our category pages www.pitchcare.com/shop are linked to from every product page via the sidebar navigation.
Which results in every category page having over 1700 links with the same anchor text.
I have noticed that the category pages dont appear to be ranked when they most definately should be.
For example http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html is not ranked for the term "moss control" instead another of our deeper pages is ranked on page 1.
Reading a previous SEO MOZ article
· Excessive Internal Anchor Text Linking / Manipulation Can Trip An Automated Penalty on Google
I recently had my second run-in with a penalty at Google that appears to punish sites for excessive internal linking with "optimized" (or "keyword stuffed anchor text") links. When the links were removed (in both cases, they were found in the footer of the website sitewide), the rankings were restored immediately following Google's next crawl, indicating a fully automated filter (rather than a manual penalty requiring a re-consideration request).Do you think we may have triggered a penalty?
If so what would be the best way to tackle this? Could we add no follows on the product pages?
Cheers
Todd
-
Thanks for your help!
Thats great!
-
Lol,
Sure, so what i showed you now, that you are serving 2 URLs with the same content. this is will be a severe problem when people will link to you to shop/moss-control/ for example. and you are focusing your link building, internet linking to this shop/moss-control/index.html. a Duplicate content filter will be flagged and will loose ranking for both.
the steps needed now, are to 301 redirect your shop/moss-control/ to shop/moss-control/index.html
-
Thanks again.
This is a little over my head now sorry Wissam.
Could you elaborate a little more? (in terms a lamen like me will understand)
Cheers
-
Todd,
your not, its my bad, need to input more into my answers.
so here is a screenshot of an http header response for shop/moss-control/
http://markup.io/v/fvjrfw5a3te5
and this is another screenshot of an http respons for shop/moss-control/index.html
http://markup.io/v/ggt61a170rfw
Both are showing a 200 response, means no redirect. please feel free to ask more
-
Sorry If I'm being really stupid here Wissam!
But when I click both the links you just provided the URLs are identical?
We have a 301 redirect set up so that both go to http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html
Again apologies if I'm missing something!
-
Todd,
When you access www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/ it will show you the exact content if you go to www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html.
Google See these two URL as 2 different URLs with same content, hence your content is duplicated
this is an article of how to deal with DC from Google Blog http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html
-
Hi Wissam,
Looking at this http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control is directed to
http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html
I cant see any duplicates?
-
Great! Thanks Richard.
They dont use no follows and they are ranking just fine! Must be down to some other factors.
Thanks for your help.
Todd
-
http://www.americanmuscle.com/
American Muscle has many, many links all pointing to category pages and they rank #1-3 on most all Mustang related searches.
I have not counted their links, but I am sure if there was a penalty for excessive internal linking, American Muscle would be a candidate.
-
Thanks for the response. We certainly have duplicate content issues that I'm looking to address but none of the product or sub category pages are affected so I'm convinced it;s down to excessive internal linking.
Open site explorer shows over 1700 internal links pointing to the category pages with the same anchor text.
Unless anyway has any direct advice on accessive linking I'll have to address all of the above and see how it goes,
Thanks anyway.
Todd
-
Thanks again I've freshened the content on the category pages so hopefully that will help also.
-
Todd,
One URL have /index.html and the other URL is without.
and i dnt thing you have been penalized for excessive internatl links.
and I would add more content to accommodate additional links.
-
I would not think that you are being penalized as many large sites would also be. I do not have time this morning to look over your site in detail (sorry), but run it through the Campaign manager and see what errors crop up. As Wissam mentioned, you may have canonical issues that need to be resolved. SEOmoz has many article on canonicalization.
I hope this helped
-
Hi Wissam
Thanks for the advice.
It appears the 2 URLs you gave me that point to the same content are identical? http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html
I've created some other internal links pointing to category pages but not within product or sub categories so i'll try that also.
I also plan on deep linking to these category pages but I'm worried that we have been penalised for so many internal links?
If we have been penalised I would imagine these additional external & internal links would make little difference.
Todd
-
I found multiple issues that can help you serve Google with the page you want to rank.
- I think there is an issue of Duplicate content your having with your website.
your page can be accessed by going to http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/ and http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html so what i would do is either 301 redirect or rel canonical
- In side Moss Control category items and pages try to do internal linking to the main directory.
For example http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/hard-surface-moss-killer/index.html i would link from this page to the main category
- try do to some link building to these Main category pages, (social bookmarking) blogs, articles, etc.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
So many links from single site?
this guy is ranking on all high volume keywords and has low quality content, he has 1600 ref domains check the attachment how did he get so many links from single site is he gonna be penalized YD2BvQ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Site Speed Testing Tools For Production Sites
Hi Guys, Any free site speed testing tools for sites in production, which are password protected? We want to test site speed before the new site goes live on top priority pages. Site is on Shopify – we tried google page insights while being logged into the production site but believe its just recording the speed of the password page. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brandonegroup1 -
More internal links pointing to internal page vs homepage
I was looking at our GSC internal links section and I saw that we have 901 internal links going to our compare rates form and 890 going to our homepage. At the end of most of our content I add a call to action to our compare rates form. Is this SEO friendly or should I have more pointing to the homepage and less pointing to our compare rates page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE0 -
301 old site to new site?
I have client with an old site - www.bestfamilylawattorney.com - which had a lot of spammy links (and bad rankings). Instead of fixing those issues, we started a new URL - www.berenjifamilylaw.com - with new content and redesign. Should I do a 301 redirect from old to new domain? If the old site was being penalized, would a 301 transfer that penalty? I just want to make sure I don't end up hurting the new site after doing all the work to start fresh. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
Google webmaster tools showing "no data available" for links to site, why?
In my google webmaster account I'm seeing all the data in other categories except links to my site. When I click links to my site I get a "no data available" message. Does anyone know why this is happening? And if so, what to do to fix it? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nicktaylor10 -
To recover from Penguin update, shall i remove the links or disavow links?
Hi, One of our websites hit by Penguin update and I now know where the links are coming from. I have chance to remove the links from those incoming links but I am a little confused whether i should just remove the links from incoming links or disavow the links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
How should i best structure my internal links?
I am new to SEO and looking to employ a logical but effective internal link strategy. Any easy ways to keep track of what page links to what page? I am a little confused regarding anchor text in as much as how I should use this. e.g. for a category page "Towels", I was going to link this to another page we want to build PA for such as "Bath Sheets". What should I put in for anchor text? keep it simple and just put "Bath Sheets" or make it more direct like "Buy Bath Sheets". Should I also vary anchor text if i have another 10 pages internally linking to this or keep it the same. Any advise would be really helpful. Thanks Craig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0